The Third Rightly Guided Caliph, Uthman, was assassinated at the end of a siege upon his house. Initially a protest, the siege escalated following an apparently wrongly attributed threat as well as the death of a protester. The protesters turned rebels had demanded a new caliph to which demands Uthman had refused and on July 17, 656 C.E., as his house was set alight, some protestors were able to jump to the back of his house, where they found him reading quran. They gave him a blow over the head and stabbed him.